There is a fully tacticool Jeep Wrangler that lives in my neighborhood with the license plate “Im Singl” … everytime I drive past it I can’t help thinking “Can’t imagine why!”

On the other had, I am somehow able to both laugh at the pic above and still not assume women are worse drivers (in fact, research suggests the opposite). A friend used to call things like that “meta-jokes”–they’re funny because you picture the kind of people who take them seriously.

Speaking as someone who tapped his own garage door – going forward – some 16 years ago, I’ll also not comment.

Long story, but I’d just moved into the house. Unfamiliar surroundings, lots on my mind, you all know the excuses. Very minor damage to the door, and the scratch on the car buffed right out. I’d like to think it happens to the best of us.

Speaking as a male, who has backed into two of my wife’s cars, in the driveway, I too will shut up. Once with her watching, once when she was in the car with me. The latter buffed out, but the former (Land Cruiser vs Corolla) was not so pleasant. Now she keeps her car in the garage and mine is on the street.

Yes my father recently reversed into his garage door while it was opening. Luckily the Escape is made of heavier gauge steel than the door. Some jacking and hammering and the buckles were not too noticable.

Mrs DougD works at a hospital and our vehicles accumulate scrapes and dents at an alarming rate. All those old folks and a tightly packed parking garage, it’s unfortunate but I would not consider such a jerkoff response as shown in the photo.

Laser cutting makes stickers like this inexpensive and easy. At the last tuner show I attended, a couple had a booth set up and were turning them out on a while you wait basis. Very popular, “Let me guess, license and registration?” to be mounted on the rain guard on the driver’s door. Maggie wants one for her car.

I’m having a fond memory of that scene from “Wonder Woman” where she flips the armored car like it’s a Matchbox toy. Whoever this driver is, they’d better hope Diana doesn’t make a swing through their neighborhood.

Based on a not-scientific sampling from among my friends, a fair number of gay men drive Subarus, too. Then there are the Subarus I see at church every Sunday; of course, it’s a very social-justice-oriented Episcopal church, so I’m not surprised.

I don’t think Ive EVER known a lesbian to drive a Subaru….CR-Vs, absolutely. Here in PDX, Outbacks are overwhelmingly used as generic family trucksters, although the ‘crunchy granola’ crowd likes them too. There seem to be 2 recurring themes among Subie owners here and both skew enthusiast: I see a lot of them with small lifts, knobby tires, roof racks and some body armor…obviously offroaders and outdoorsy types that like to get deep into some muck. The other is the tuner crowd, and I swear every Impreza you see here is owned by a 20s/30s guy with a Fox or Tapout flatbilled hat, white framed Oakleys and vape pen. Theyre usually fitted with aftermarket exhaust and say what you want about ricers, Subarus are about the sexiest sounding 4 banger ever.

Nonsense. Outbacks & Foresters are just family cars here in the south too, driven on school runs like any crossover. There is no “stereotypical” driver of a vehicle that sells by the tens of thousands.

It might not be sexist, for all we know it could just be a misunderstanding. Maybe the owner of this Subaru saw the accident and saw the driver, who he or she knew nothing of except the gender, drive off, and as the only possible recourse they could come up with was to put this label on their car, to remind the specific woman who perpetrated the hit and run, if she ever comes across it, that this is what she did, and she should feel mighty guilty for doing it.

Actually, to MOST Americans back then, it was actually humorous. And unless you were brought up in an incredibly progressive household, odds are you would have found that a chuckle, too. The ad company certainly wouldn’t have published an ad that would have potentially insulted their client’s potential customers. And the inevitable articles tossing this in with other sexist ads are all 25 years old at the most

Times and modes of thinking change. Which is something that I find very difficult to explain to millennials. They insist on trying to understand 1961 behavior in therms of 2018 thinking.

Because statistically, it’s men who have the proper crashes that cause death and injury, and men who die at about three times the rate of women. And rather horribly, like murder stats (at least in Aus) where the vast majority of killers are male, not that many of the women killed on the road were the drivers but (effectively) the victims of male behaviour.

What rate precisely is that? Deaths per what? Population? Distance driven? And if it’s the former, could it at least in part have something to do with men on average covering a greater annual distance than women, or more commonly driving vehicles by occupation, or more commonly riding motorcycles?

Also whereas statistically men are more likely to die on the road, statistically women are more likely to get into fender benders, so statistically the guy in the photo, albeit obnoxious, is more likely correct than incorrect given a random choice.

You misunderstand my point. I didn’t say the sticker wasn’t correct: the potential for it to be correct is why women should reclaim it.

In Victoria, Aus, three times as many males are killed on the road each year than females killed on the road. You can probably still safely claim that men on average do more miles than women, but it’s no longer necessarily so, as work and roles have changed. (In my immediate family, the women drive more, for reasons not applicable 20 years ago).

Deaths per miles travelled, etc, (ours is a relatively low death rate for various reasons including police-state levels of enforcement) is not relevant to the point I was making, which is about causation. Nearly all accidents serious enough to kill are not accidents at all but the results of stupidity, risk-taking, aggression, over-confident misjudgement: in short, male entitlement. In proof of that, a surviving driver at fault is always charged here, and practically never aquitted by a jury. Rarely is the person in the dock a woman. As for motorbikes, they are, in an absolutely cold-rational sense, just further proof of male stupidity, because bikes cannot ever be as safe as a car as a mere means of transport. Women don’t assume that risk.

Another somewhat creepy statistic hides in one-vehicle crashes in the country into roadside objects. Many of which are believed by investigators and coroners to be suicides, and men suicide at a much greater rate than women.

When women kill behind the wheel, it usually involves alcohol or drugs, and ofcourse these things make women behave like men do sober, risk-taking and entitled!

It is certainly the case that men driving more miles will raise their statistical risk profile, yes, but the TYPE of “accidents” that kill and maim are not linked to that. They are, rather shamefully, linked to deeply-rooted behaviours. Women killed and injured as passengers are indeed victims of male entitlement.

I don’t write this as some puritan btw, because to my own shame I’ve done stupid male things on the road. I’m also not about to tell someone not to ride their motorbike.

But many of us do not like having the negative aspects of our gender being called to account, it makes us resistant and uncomfortable. Even aggressive, ironically enough.

In truth, women shouldn’t have to reclaim anything from this vile little Subaru owner. That sign isn’t funny or clever. In 2018, it is an act of aggression. It should be men of decency who call him to account by telling him he is a misogynist embarassment with adequacy issues..

You neglect to mention the advances in vehicle safety which to me are responsible for a lot more than PC police activities like handing out zero-tolerance speeding tickets (in case you ask, I lived in Melbourne for a year between 1986-1987 and even back then it was over the top, but from what I hear from my Aussi contacts they have now gone full blown totalitarian).

And where as semantically you are, of course, correct, even in 2018 the vast majority of road Ks are covered by men; averages will be averages.

Whether the sticker is tasteless or not is another matter.

justy baum

Posted June 9, 2018 at 12:00 AM

Man, you lived in Melbourne in the good old days, not even any cameras! Very, very totalitarian now, US citizens wouldn’t put up with it. Where else does 3km/h over get you a big ticket AND a point off your licence?

I completely agree that vehicle safety advances have had a huge impact, which will only grow as the fleet gets younger, but I’ve got to admit (whisper it) that some aspects of the uber-alles enforcement has worked. Literally no-one speeds any more, because no-one can afford it, and I’ve got also to admit (really whisper it) that a pretty small speed difference makes a big difference in the accident to be had. I’ve had cause to examine this closely (and no, not personally!). Physics laws don’t alter.

As for averages, yes, men have to have higher numbers, particularly because, as Krautwursten mentioned, men tend to dominate professional driving (and I’d add that professional drivers are amongst the least represented in death-driving cases – seems men who rely on it for life behave without entitlement!). But, at least here, women do vastly more driving than they did, say, 25 years ago.

A genuine question for you. Would this sticker cause offence in Israel? (It’d get you in trouble here in the cities, but probably not so much in the bush). My memory is that Israelis are a pretty robust lot who likely couldn’t be bothered being offended by something like this, or am I making assumptions?

T. Turtle

Posted June 9, 2018 at 1:39 PM

As for the Australian police’s enforcement of road traffic law, all I’ll say there is a thing called the “law of diminishing returns” and there comes a time when the cost/effect factor stops making sense.

Count me in with the backing out of the garage too soon crowd. In a hurry to run an errand. Didn’t want to wait for my driveway-parked car to warm up. Decapitated the rooftop antenna of my wife’s CR-V and put a big, but not creased dent into the roof.

A trip to the Honda dealer for a new antenna, some paintless dent removal, plus about 5 1/2 C notes and all was well again.

One of my body shop customers called me this week to order a right outside mirror for an ’09 Focus… to replace the right outside mirror the same female customer had replaced the week before. She seems to be a bit reverse adverse…

I’ve replaced the right passenger mirror on my Mother’s Impala, and there are numerous scrapes on (primarily the passenger) side of the car, but don’t really blame my Mother; rather my brother-in-law (who lives in the same home) and sister are really pack-rats, and the garage is stacked full of stuff (no basement) such that it is really not too easy to pull the car in and out of the garage (and my Mother is very cautious but still gets it too tight sometimes). They have a right-angle garage entry, and my Sister can’t pull her subcompact car in far enough to allow the Impala to swing in easily (albeit the turning radius of the Impala isn’t that good)…when I park the car myself I always feel I’m about to hit my Sister’s car.

Now trying to convince them to get rid of some of the junk is another matter.